The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

by James Sheehan

  Jack was still pacing, and Pat motioned for him to come back and sit down. When he did, Maria started to speak, but she didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze down at a spot on the floor near his feet.

  “Two years after Rudy was convicted of Lucy Ochoa’s murder, we—I mean the police department—received a letter from the police department of the City of Del Rio, Texas. I was a receptionist/secretary at the time, and it was my job to open the mail. The letter said they had just arrested a man named Geronimo Cruz for rape and murder. It just so happened that he had a Florida driver’s license that listed an address in Bass Creek. It was a typical inquiry letter. They wanted to know if we were looking for him for any reason or if we could supply them with any information that would assist them in their investigation or prosecution.”

  Maria looked up into Jack’s face for the first time. “I should tell you that it was common knowledge among the Latinos of Bass Creek that a man named Geronimo killed Lucy Ochoa. When I read this letter, I immediately told Wesley—he was a sergeant then—about it. I knew he had investigated Lucy’s murder. He called the state attorney, Clay Evans, right there and then from the phone at my desk, and I heard him telling him about the letter. He listened to whatever Clay Evans was saying, and then I heard him say, ‘I’ll be right over,’ and as soon as he put down the phone, he set out for Mr. Evans’s office with the letter in hand.”

  She dropped her eyes to the floor again. “I never heard anything after that. It was never mentioned again. I never saw the letter again.”

  At first, Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but after a few moments it all made sense to him. Everything fell into place. Rudy’s case had been very high profile. All the local affiliates covered it, as did the national news media, probably because of the gruesome nature of the crime and the “boy-next-door” qualities of the young man who supposedly did it. At the time this letter surfaced, Clay Evans was being considered for a federal judgeship solely because of the attention he received for the successful prosecution of the Kelly case. If that case had gone south, his prospects would have as well. He probably promised Brume something, maybe the chief of police job, in return for shit-canning the letter.

  “Why didn’t you tell somebody about this when it happened?” Jack almost shouted. Pat gave him a look like daggers.

  “Who was I going to tell? Who was going to believe me—a poor Latino woman with two kids and no husband? If I had the letter I would have said something. Without it I couldn’t risk it. I had two kids to protect. I finally told Nancy. I had to. I couldn’t let Rudy die without telling someone. But look what they did to her and Tracey James.”

  Maria was sobbing now. Pat put her arms around her and comforted her.

  “Jack, you’ve got to stop!” she said. “It’s not this poor woman’s fault. She didn’t do anything.”

  But Jack was still thinking about Nancy, and about Rudy. And in his frustration he wasn’t able to stir much sympathy for Maria. She was rewarded for her silence! She’s the administrative assistant to the chief of police! Doesn’t she know how she got that job! But the more rational part of his brain knew Pat was right. Maria hadn’t spoken up because she was afraid and she had probably correctly assessed the situation: Nobody would have believed her. And the danger to her and her children was very real—Tracey James and Nancy could have attested to that if they were still around!

  “I’m sorry, Maria. I didn’t mean that. I guess I’m still on edge. Listen, for now until we figure out what we’re going to do, let’s just pretend we never had this conversation.”

  Maria didn’t say anything. Her sobs had stopped, but the tears were still running down her face.

  Jack came up with a plan two weeks later. Bob Richards had called to mend fences.

  “How are you doing, Jack?” Bob asked in his most sympathetic voice. Jack was about to tell him to go fuck himself when the idea struck him.

  “I’m okay, Bob, thanks for asking.” The governor started to say something else equally insincere—apparently he couldn’t help himself—when Jack sprang the question. “Is the job still mine, Bob? Or did I go too far?”

  “I’m not sure, Jack. I didn’t know you still wanted it.”

  “Well, I do—that is, if you still want me.”

  “Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

  It was a good performance, probably because he’d had no time to rehearse. After that, it had been easy to seal the deal. He called David Williams, a state senator from Miami and an old acquaintance he’d supported and campaigned for in the past. David was now the senate president. Jack asked him to put in a good word for him with Bob Richards. Next, he called a few very wealthy contributors to the governor’s campaign that he knew and asked them to do the same thing. It was totally out of character for him and it made him feel a little slimy, but he kept telling himself it was for a higher purpose. By the end of the week, the state attorney’s job was his again.

  He and Pat paid another visit to Maria Lopez after Jack’s new position had been secured.

  “I start work as the new state attorney in a couple of weeks, and I want you to come work for me.” This time Jack was sitting on the couch so he wasn’t directly confronting Maria. Pat took the chair. It was a subtle move that he never even would have considered if Pat hadn’t suggested it. I need to keep this woman around, he smiled to himself.

  “I can’t,” Maria said, with an edge of desperation in her voice. “If I go to work for you they’ll know I talked to you. They’ll kill me.”

  “Maria, I’m going to move against these guys soon. I don’t know the exact time frame because certain things have to happen over which I don’t have any control. I can’t explain it any better than that right now. But if they get wind that I’m planning something against them, you’ll be in danger no matter who you’re working for.” Jack was failing miserably at the reassurance game.

  Pat took over at that point. “Maria, our plan is not only to have you work for Jack, but to have you come live with us as well. Not forever—we don’t want you to have to give up your house—but until this is done. We have a big place and we’re going to have two retired Miami police officers, homicide detectives, living with us and guarding us twenty-four hours a day. One of them will drive you and Jack to work and pick you up every day. We’re going to make you as safe as you can possibly be.”

  “I don’t know. What about my kids?” Pat had known she would be overwhelmed and her first thought would be about her children.

  “We’ve discussed that,” Jack jumped in, “that maybe they would go after your children.” Pat looked warningly at him, but he knew where he was going this time. “We’ve looked into their circumstances, and as you know, neither Carlos nor Maria is attached. Neither has started on a career path yet. We can relocate them and give them new identities temporarily. We have the resources to do that.” He chose not to mention that this part of the project would be completely under the table.

  Maria just looked at him, as if to ask by her expression, Isn’t that illegal? Won’t you be the state attorney?

  Jack returned her look with a smile. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t plan on being in this job very long. Just long enough, if you know what I mean. So what do you say, Maria? It’s not a foolproof plan but it will make you and your children as secure as you can possibly be—because whether you agree to work for me and live with us or not, all hell is going to break loose in this town soon, and you’re going to be in the middle of it.” Pat gave an exasperated sigh, but Jack felt strongly that he had to be honest with the woman.

  “I could refuse to talk,” Maria said quietly.

  “They’ll kill you anyway,” Jack told her. “They won’t take that chance. Especially since they’ve been so successful with their other murders.”

  Maria was silent for a while. Finally, she took a deep breath and sighed. “I guess I have no choice. What happens to me when this is over and you leave?”


  “I’m not leaving town and you’ll always have a job with me.”

  Somehow that did the trick, and her face visibly relaxed. Jack looked over at Pat with satisfaction, and she gave him a knowing look that told him just how close she thought he’d come to blowing it.

  Two weeks later on a Monday morning, Jack’s first day as the new Cobb County state attorney, Wesley Brume came to work and found a plain white envelope planted squarely in the middle of his desk. He opened it and read the letter inside:

  Dear Chief Brume:

  I am resigning my position in your office effective immediately. I’ve enjoyed working for you.

  Sincerely,

  Maria Lopez

  Wesley Brume was livid. When he found out the next day that Maria Lopez had gone to work for Jack Tobin, he hit the roof.

  Thirty–eight

  A few weeks after taking over as state attorney in late January, when the staff had settled in and were fairly comfortable with their new boss, Jack took the opportunity to slip out of town for a few days alone. He had meticulously planned the trip, calling the warden of the Ellis unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice himself and setting up an appointment to interview Geronimo Cruz. He told the warden that he was investigating whether Geronimo had anything to do with Lucy Ochoa’s murder. He neglected to tell him that Rudy had already been executed for the crime and that he planned on indicting Bass Creek’s chief of police and a federal judge for his murder. Those details certainly would have affected the level of cooperation he received. As it was, the warden was delighted to help a fellow member of law enforcement solve another crime. When Jack told him he was going to bring a court reporter and a videographer to the prison in the event Cruz decided to talk, the warden almost laughed into the phone. Cruz was a tough nut. He wasn’t going to tell anybody anything. But the warden didn’t tell Jack that. Why discourage a man who was passionately pursuing justice?

  “Sure, bring ’em along,” he drawled. “Anything we can do to help.”

  The Ellis unit of the Texas penal system was located just outside Huntsville. It was a maximum-security facility, holding close to two thousand prisoners. All executions in the state took place at Ellis and Geronimo Cruz, who had been convicted of rape and murder in 1994, occupied one of the death row cells.

  Jack left the court reporter and the videographer at the front desk, telling the guard there that he might need them at a moment’s notice and to process them now. The guard had to call the warden to get clearance, which took a few minutes and made Jack wildly impatient. Fucking bureaucracy! You set everything up beforehand and you have to do it all over once you get there. Eventually, everyone received the necessary clearance and Jack asked the guard how he could get in touch with him.

  “There’s a phone in the room you’re going to. It’s on the wall,” the guard told him. “Just pick it up and it will ring here. I’ll send them back.”

  “If you go on break, please explain everything to your relief man. If this guy decides to talk, I’m going to need these people right away. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Before Jack left them, he had the court reporter and the videographer set up their equipment in the waiting room. “When I call you, you need to be there and you need to be ready, understand?” Both of them nodded without looking up from what they were doing. It wasn’t the crisp military response he’d gotten from the guard, but these people were in business for themselves: If things didn’t go right, they wouldn’t get paid. Jack was confident they would be ready when—and if—the time came.

  The procedure to enter the inner sanctum was almost the same as at Starke. Jack went through one set of bars and then a second set. He was led down a narrow hallway to a room, a little larger than the one at Starke, that contained a metal table and four chairs all bolted to the floor.

  They must send all the prison architects to the same design school, Jack mused. He was in a rare mood now and was actually looking forward to meeting Geronimo Cruz. Somehow he knew they were going to find common ground.

  A few minutes after he entered the room, he could hear the guards ushering Cruz down the hall, the chains rattling familiarly as Cruz walked along. While the guards maneuvered him into one of the chairs, Jack was a world away, arranging in his mind how he was going to persuade Cruz to testify for him.

  Geronimo Cruz looked taller than his six-foot height because he was so thin and wiry. He had lightly tanned skin and a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee. His eyes were large and glassy, like he had just smoked a few joints before breakfast, and he had a smile on his face. But it wasn’t anywhere close to Rudy’s open, generous smile. It was a malevolent sneer. Jack had heard cops say that when you were in the presence of a killer you could feel it. He felt it as soon as Geronimo Cruz walked in the door. He felt a shot of adrenaline rush through his veins, and his heart started racing. It was as if his body knew danger was close by.

  But he remembered his purpose and could feel a Rudy-like calmness come over him. He had a plan for Geronimo Cruz and he was going to follow it come hell or high water.

  “Mr. Cruz, my name is Jack Tobin. I’m the state attorney for Cobb County, Florida, and I’m here investigating the murder of a woman named Lucy Ochoa in the town of Bass Creek in 1986.” It was a mouthful but Jack just put it out there and then shut up. Cruz didn’t say anything right away. He just looked at Jack and then chuckled through his sneer a few times. “So, investigate,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  “Your name was given to us after the murder by two men, Raymond Castro and José Guerrero. They said you dated Lucy and went to her trailer the night of the murder.” Cruz chuckled through his sneer again, this time louder than before. He knew it was a lie. Ray and José hadn’t known his last name, and he had talked to them after they talked to the police. He was certain they’d never told the police that he went to Lucy’s trailer. He was also certain that after that first interview they’d never spoken to the police again. He actually hadn’t left town until after they did.

  “So are you here to arrest me, or what? What took you so long?”

  “Not exactly. Someone else was arrested and convicted for that murder.”

  “So why are you talking to me?”

  “Because I think the person who was convicted was wrongfully convicted.”

  “And you want me to confess to get this other person out of jail? What is it, your son or something?”

  Jack ignored the remark. “I want you to confess but not to get anybody out of jail. The person who was charged with this murder has already been executed.”

  Cruz paused for a second, thinking his hearing must have been off. Then he started laughing. “You’re kidding me, right? You want me to confess to a murder that somebody else was convicted and executed for?” Jack nodded. “Man, if you could just get me some of that shit you’re smoking, I’d sure appreciate it. The stuff they’ve got in here is garbage.”

  Jack again ignored the remark. Up to this point, Cruz was acting just as he’d expected.

  “Look pal, you’re on death row here in Texas for rape and murder. Your appeals are over and your execution date has been set for three months from now. I’m sure you know that they kill their people here in Texas.”

  “So what? Just because I’m scheduled to die you want me to cop to another murder? For what? So you can feel good?”

  Jack leaned over the table towards Geronimo and lowered his voice. The guards didn’t seem to notice, or maybe they didn’t care so long as the prisoner was behaving himself.

  “Look,” Jack began, “I represented the kid they executed. His name was Rudy Kelly. He was half Puerto Rican and he worked at the convenience store near Lucy’s. Now I’m the state attorney for Cobb County. I have reason to believe that the investigating officer and the state attorney at the time knew about you—or at least learned about you later and did nothing to stop Rudy’s execution. They let Rudy die so they could put a feather in their own
caps. Because of this case, one of them became chief of police, and the other became a federal judge. I plan on prosecuting both of them for murder, but the first thing I need to establish is that you killed Lucy. I can do that without you: I can take a blood sample and match the DNA to the semen that was found the night of the murder. You slit the throat of that woman in Del Rio with the same type of serrated knife that killed Lucy. I think a jury can put those facts together rather nicely, but it would be more forceful if I had a videotaped confession from you as to how the murder occurred. I think the jury would be more likely to convict these two men with your testimony.”

  Cruz’s glassy eyes widened as he listened.

  “Hot damn!” he exclaimed when Jack was through. “You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Mr. State Attorney. I don’t think they like you folks fucking with each other, you know that? Especially over a couple of spics like me and this Rudy kid. They might fry your ass.”

  Jack could see he was getting to him. “I’ll worry about my ass. How about it? Are you in or out?”

  Geronimo Cruz had never confessed to anything in his life, not even to himself. But this was enticing. He needed something, though. He always had to get something. There had to be an angle to play. He couldn’t just do this for nothing.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, leaning in. “If you can assure me that I’ll be around for the end of this trial, that I’ll be able to know these fuckers were convicted, I’ll do it.”

  “Can’t do it, Geronimo. I can tell you I’ll try like hell to have this trial in the next three months, and if I can’t do that, I’ll file a motion to have your execution delayed. I don’t think it will do any good, seeing as how they like to kill their people here on time and nobody in law enforcement, including judges, is going to want to help me. But I’ll try, if necessary.”

  “I like it that those bastards don’t like what you’re doing and won’t help you. You give me your word you’ll file a motion to have my execution delayed?”